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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25157293">Transmutation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain'>Shampain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Epoch [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Existential Angst, Flashbacks, M/M, No Shame No Beta, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:15:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25157293</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the years Poe has become stronger, faster, and better, all thanks to the help of Leia Organa. He has been a hero of the Resistance, and a lover of broken things.</p><p>But she's gone now, and maybe it's time for a change.</p><p>A follow up to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24381871">but we could have lived forever</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503062">if only we had stayed</a>. It's officially a series!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Epoch [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822489</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Transmutation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I highly recommend you read the two earlier pieces if you haven't, or this won't make a whole lot of sense.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="u">34 ABY</span>
</p><p>“Try not to get yourself killed,” Leia said, as Poe was getting ready to climb up into his ship. BB-8 was already locked into place, waiting to go, beeping excitedly. It wasn’t far to Jakku, but it would be dangerous. His youth spent running spices had given him an edge in sneaking through enemy territory, even though it was something he preferred to keep only between himself and Leia. She understood, but he didn’t think anyone else would. “You’re my best pilot.”</p><p>“I’m your best everything,” he winked, and he watched her almost, but not quite, roll her eyes.</p><p>He didn’t believe in failure anymore, not even in himself. There could be no such thing. Failure was simply a detour, something that could be circumvented. Whether it happened or not was never his concern; only the goal, which shone bright and fearsome like a star.</p><p>“I won’t let you down,” he promised.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u">37 ABY</span>
</p><p>“You’d have liked her,” he told Armitage. It was lights out and the bedroom was dark, but Poe’s eyes had long become accustomed to it. He was sitting up in their bed, the other man pressed close to his side, laying down. He had an arm draped around Poe’s waist, and Poe was trailing his fingertips up and down it, thoughtfully.</p><p>“I don’t think she would have liked me,” was the dry rejoinder, coming from somewhere around Poe’s ribcage.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Poe mused. “You have a lot in common. Had.”</p><p>Armitage huffed a laugh. “I do not have <em>anything</em> in common with your General Organa, save for the part where we were both once Generals.”</p><p>“You were both raised in command,” Poe pointed out. “Keen military minds. Intelligent. Leaders.”</p><p>“That’s not a lot in common. That’s just a few details.”</p><p>“Well,” Poe said, shifting a bit, causing Armitage to look up at him. “How about the fact you both fell head over heels for flyboys who are no good for you?”</p><p>Armitage scoffed, but even in the dark Poe could tell there was something of a smile hanging around his face. “I haven’t done any falling.”</p><p>“You have been falling over <em>everything</em>,” Poe disagreed. “Me. Dio. The Falcon, that one time.”</p><p>“That was Rey’s fault,” Armitage said, sitting up, dislodging Poe’s hand. “She, in her infinite wisdom, loosened the bolt of the structure we were <em>standing on</em>.”</p><p>Armitage was one of the few people who could squeeze himself into even the smallest of the Falcon’s nooks and crannies, and as a result Rey usually requested his help as she went about repairs, back before she’d taken the Falcon and Finn and herself into unchartered space. At the time of the Mud Incident, she and Armitage had been on the underside of the Falcon, and they had crashed through a layer of worn, weakened metal to the ground below. A series of tropical storms had turned the landing spot to mud, breaking their fall but sparking a brawl. Poe, unfortunately, had not seen the ensuing fight – he had only been present to hose the two of them off – but both Armitage and Rey claimed to have won it. To be fair to Armitage, he’d made Rey eat an impressive amount of mud before Finn dragged him off. Rey had apparently forgotten that she was a Jedi.</p><p>“Sure it was,” Poe said, dismissively.</p><p>“Are you questioning my veracity?” Armitage asked.</p><p>“You should <em>know</em> I have no idea what veracity means.”</p><p>“You are an idiot,” Armitage said, slowly, but more like he was talking to himself than to Poe. He shifted, not quite sitting up, but draping himself more comfortably alongside Poe, laying his cheek against Poe’s shoulder.</p><p>“I’m your idiot,” Poe said.</p><p>Armitage did not answer, which he took as agreement. In the dark he found Armitage’s hand with his own and they laid like that for some time, neither of them talking, but listening to each other’s breath.</p><p>“Why are you thinking about her?” Armitage asked, after so long Poe thought he must have fallen asleep. “Has she been on your mind?”</p><p>“A bit.” People weren’t perfect, but Leia was close, the closest Poe had ever come across. He was starting to think that the fact she didn’t survive the war meant that they had won a different fight than the one they had been intending, like they had all gotten off track, somehow, fighting for the wrong things. “I feel lost without her, sometimes. Especially these days.”</p><p>Armitage’s voice, when it came, was strangely soft and soothing. It was not that he didn’t care for Poe – Poe knew he did, knew that if it came down to it Armitage Hux would go to the ends of the galaxy for him – but that he was not used to offering comfort and avoided it when he could. It was a strange, unusual thing for him, like someone learning to use a new utensil at dinner. “You’ll be fine.”</p><p>As much as he appreciated the sentiment, Poe couldn’t help but sigh.</p><p>“You don’t believe me?”</p><p>“I believe that you believe I’ll be fine.” Armitage started to move again, and Poe bit back a groan; he’d manage to annoy the other man into sleeping elsewhere again, he was sure. “What? Are you mad now?”</p><p>Armitage’s voice, when he answered, took Poe by surprise; he was laughing without laughing at all, his tone bursting with amusement. “Poe,” he said, climbing up into his lap; Poe held onto his waist as he settled in, keeping him steady. “You’re acting like I’m some star struck, lovesick teenager. I assure you, the last thing I’m about to do is think highly of you.”</p><p>“Oh?” Poe laughed. “Kriff, you’re a charmer.”</p><p>“Thinking highly of people is a lie we tell ourselves,” Armitage said, ignoring him. He pressed their foreheads together and Poe felt the tickle of Armitage’s hair falling against his cheek. “<em>And</em> you’ll be fine. The purpose of a mentor is to prepare you for when they have gone. You had a mentor, and she’s gone, but she was a good woman, and you never have to doubt how much she believed in you.”</p><p>A strange, prickling sensation travelled down Poe’s spine at those words. He smoothed his hands up the other man’s back, feeling Armitage curve a bit against the touch as a cat might.</p><p>“What was their name?” he asked.</p><p>Armitage drew back slightly in what Poe assumed was surprise. “What?”</p><p>“Your mentor,” he said. “What was their name?”</p><p>Armitage did not hesitate, even though Poe thought he would. “Rae Sloane.”</p><p>Poe let out a low whistle. Grand Admiral Rae Sloane of the First Order? He couldn’t imagine there being two of them. “Did she care about you?”</p><p>“Theoretically.”</p><p>“I won’t even pretend to know what that means,” Poe muttered, and that earned him a short, bitter laugh from Armitage.</p><p>He pulled Armitage down against him, shifting and stretching out, settling in for sleep. He was done with thinking and agonizing for the night, he supposed. The present was a better place than the past in many respects, especially when it came to Armitage Hux and rearranging their limbs so that they fit together just right… but Poe would always miss her.</p><p>“Leia would have cared about you,” he said.</p><p>The other man let out a huff of breath against Poe’s chest; a laugh. “You’re so certain. Why?”</p><p>“Because I care about you.”</p><p>“Hm,” Armitage murmured.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u">38 ABY</span>
</p><p>The settlement felt empty without Armitage. Poe didn’t even know why he went back.</p><p>When Poe had been feeling particularly low once – overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, and guilt, and haunted by his past mistakes – he had gone to Leia. “I’m not good enough,” he had said. “I’ve been thinking about it. I’m just… I’m not good enough. I need to be better. I <em>want</em> to be better.”</p><p>He had been tensed for a rejoinder of the like Leia would usually give – a brusque talking-to for him to get his head out of his ass and back in the game, or perhaps a hope-inspired reminder of the power of the Force – but, like always, she had surprised him with going further than he ever expected her to go.</p><p>“Alright,” she’d said. “If that’s true, then there’s only one question you need to ask yourself: are you ready to give up who you are, in order to become what you need to be?”</p><p>Transformation, as Leia taught it, was a natural phenomenon. But it was still growth, and growth involved being uncomfortable. She taught him to keep an eye out for that – for when his mind started to chafe and fidget, for when his heart began to shudder. Discomfort and pain, the warning signs of change. When it happened, she told him, he must be ready to go with it; to let it carry him downstream, to welcome a newer, better Poe Dameron into existence.</p><p>But there were such a thing as mutations, too – a constant transformation, often caught in an unending loop. Things that grew in an abnormal way, often to deal with abnormal surroundings. Freakish, dangerous things, sometimes.</p><p>Poe thought about Armitage, a man who had seemed at first to exist purely of sharp corners and dark thoughts, but who he had seen kneel thoughtlessly in the mud when D-O’s wheel had gotten stuck after a particularly bad rainstorm. Armitage <em>hated</em> being dirty; he hadn’t spoken to Rey for days after the mud fight. He had not hesitated in helping the little droid.</p><p>Transformation. Growth.</p><p>Death. Decay.</p><p>It was late in the day, the sun hanging low, the trees diffusing the light into a greenish glow as he walked. If he let his mind relax, and wander, he could just imagine that around the next tree he might come across Leia, meditating in the quiet, or even Rey floating above the ground, her mind elsewhere.</p><p>But there was no one around, save for himself, and his droid, and his thoughts. He had wandered far.</p><p>“This will happen to you all your life, Poe,” Leia had told him. “The world will change and you are going to need to change with it. But however willing you might be, there are always parts of us we can’t bear to let go. Even the bad parts; especially the bad parts, because they keep us safe.”</p><p>That was how darkness in someone might flourish, Poe knew. When the world remained a dangerous place, and the old ways still worked, it made sense to trust in them. He’d seen it in Armitage, a man so covered in mental armour he may as well have been a Stormtrooper. And Poe had seen it fade, too.</p><p>Poe could not help but feel that even though Armitage had changed for the better, Poe had ruined him – opened him up to the dangers of the world, weakened him and left him defenceless. The world around them had appeared to soften, and so that was what they had done as well.</p><p>“I was supposed to keep him safe, and I didn’t,” Poe said, aloud, to the trees, needing to voice his thoughts before they drove him insane. Behind him, BB-8 chirped in concern, but he ignored them. BB-8 had a hard time understanding what was going on, at least in terms of Poe’s heart; the droid could not comprehend the slow break, the fissures starting to spread through Poe’s soul. All they knew was that Armitage was gone, and Poe was not handling it well.</p><p>The jungle was thick with low-hanging vegetation, droplets of moisture clinging to the underside of leaves and trickling down the back of his neck as he pushed through. BB-8 told him they were close.</p><p>There were more important things for Poe to do, but he didn’t feel like doing them. Hadn’t for quite some time. He scratched thoughtfully at his beard – he hadn’t meant to grow it, had simply let it go too long, but now it kept people at bay, which he preferred – and then placed his fingertips to his mouth and blew a high-pitched whistle, one that had BB-8 wiggling back and forth beside him.</p><p>He couldn’t hear an answer, but BB-8’s sensors picked up a signal, and they trilled. “Can you get him to come out?” he asked.</p><p>BB-8 answered in the negative, but rolled past him, leading the way. He followed, breathing in the scent of the jungle around him, damp and ripe. When he dislodged loam beneath his boots the scent of rot rose to the surface, tickling his nose. The Force was here, as it was in all things, so he was told. But he felt nothing.</p><p>BB-8 called to him from the undergrowth.</p><p>It was D-O, sideways next to a fallen tree. Bits of bark were everywhere, suggesting the tree had up until recently been upright. For a moment Poe felt panic, but then the little droid produced a soft, rusty-sounding “Hello”.</p><p>Still operational, but only just. Rust had begun to eat away at him, and tipped on his side, on ground too soft to find purchase, he had likely been unable to get back up. Vines had already started to creep across him. He looked lost, and pathetic, just how Poe felt.</p><p>“Hey, buddy,” he said, but as he bent down the droid shook and quaked, and BB-8 chirped worriedly. Poe pulled a knife from his belt, grimacing as he began to cut away the strangling vines, wondering how long the droid had been stuck out there with neither himself nor Armitage to watch out for him.</p><p>“Armitage isn’t here,” he said, at D-O’s panicked beeping. He tried not to grind his teeth as the droid continued to struggle, but he was completely unprepared for the tinny voice that seemed to echo in the empty jungle.</p><p>“Is-he-home?”</p><p>Poe’s hand slipped, and he sliced the back of his hand, blood welling up immediately. He cursed, and the droid shuddered fearfully, as if he might take his rage out on him. Poe forced himself to relax, pulling the scarf from around his throat and holding it to the back of his hand.</p><p>“No,” he said. “But I’ll take care of you until he gets back.”</p><p>“No!”</p><p>Poe closed his eyes, feeling them start to burn. He hadn’t wept since he had visited Armitage, nearly two months before, and he hadn’t expected to again after that. The part of him that had always felt so deeply about everything had been scratched into nothingness, or so he’d thought. But the hurt remained like an ember, suddenly flaring to light.</p><p>“Come on, Dio,” he said. “You’re all rusty. He’ll be so mad if you don’t let me clean you up.”</p><p>To Poe’s relief – and to his heartache – the droid quieted after that. By the time Poe had carried him back to the settlement night had fallen, and most everyone was inside in front of their fans, or taking cold showers, or just doing whatever they did to avoid him now. Poe no longer had time for niceties, and as a result most everyone had no time for Poe.</p><p>In Armitage’s workshop – shuttered since the New Republic agents had ransacked it for evidence of treason – he found everything he needed to tend to D-O, and also some bacta for his hand. The various lamps flickered to life as he switched them on, the illumination watery but enough for him to do what he needed. Armitage usually only worked during the day; Poe tended to monopolize him in the evening.</p><p>The best way to eliminate rust, Poe knew, was to simply remove it. It was like a disease that would spread, eating away at the organic matter it lived on. But for D-O no surgery was needed, just a metal file.</p><p>The little droid had fallen into a battery-saving stupor, and did not make any complaints as Poe swept the file back and forth over the rust. He did it slowly, methodically, with more patience and effort than most things in his life those days.</p><p>BB-8 quietly asked him what he was thinking.</p><p>Outside the trees creaked and the night birds sang, and there were the soft, soundless sounds of many people all living together but separately. There was a future here, which is why Poe had remained. But it was not his future, he recognized now. His was elsewhere.</p><p>“I’m thinking about transformation,” he said. “I’m thinking about how we change to better ourselves, or we change to survive. And how sometimes you have to pick one over the other.”</p><p><em>What if you have no choice?</em> BB-8 whistled.</p><p>“Leia said there is always a choice,” Poe replied. He dusted the rust off of D-O, who stirred quietly.</p><p>
  <em>Always?</em>
</p><p>“Always,” he said. “But that’s what it is to be human, Beebee-ate. You’re lucky.”</p><p>BB-8 bumped gently into his leg, chirruped quietly. Poe felt the existence of the darkness in the workshop like pools of velvet, real enough to touch, sheltering him. He took a moment to stare at the tin of special polish Armitage had fabricated, using his wits and a pile of manufacturing equipment he and Rose Tico had cobbled together.</p><p>Most people Poe knew who had grown up in a military behemoth like the First Order did not know how to write by hand, but Armitage could – of course he did, what couldn’t he do? <em>D-O – polish – close tightly – 36ABY</em> was written on the label in Armitage’s neat, tidy hand.</p><p>“What did you <em>see</em> in him?” a representative from the New Republic had once been unwise enough to ask. Poe broke his nose, effectively removing him from any future involvement with the trial. They didn’t want anyone who thought kindly of Armitage Hux to say their piece. They told him it was for Poe’s own good, to protect him from himself.</p><p>He tore his gaze from the tin of polish to wander through the workshop. It was less than two years old and there had already been so many memories there, but the same could be said for the Millennium Falcon, or his x-wing, or even Starkiller Base. Sometimes, a place was just a place.</p><p>“I think this time I’ll choose survival,” he said. BB-8 murmured their assent. Poe opened the tin, dipped a clean rag in the polish, and began to buff D-O’s beaten frame.</p><p>If the galaxy did not want Poe Dameron as he was, then perhaps they would get a different Poe Dameron entirely.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Well, I guess this is a <i>thing</i> I'm doing now so it's officially a series! Y'all wanted more sads, so here it is. Please note I have only the vaguest idea of how I want this to end up, but if major character death happens it <i>will</i> be tagged beforehand so you have the choice to stop whenever you like, I wouldn't do you dirty and just sneak it in.</p><p>I love Rae Sloane as a protective, beloved figure for Armitage, but I'm also interested in her having protected him out of self interest from the get-go. It gives me an opportunity for Hux to compare the good things that we do regardless of our intentions, and whether or not that weakens our appreciation of it. Also I just like giving Hux and Poe problems. I mean. If you've read this far that shouldn't surprise you. </p><p>Also, I stared too long at Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto, so now Poe has a beard.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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